Impressive female line-up for the Austrian Masters
The Austrian Masters, featuring a 100,000 € prize money, will be staged in St. Pölten, about 100 km from Vienna, within the Event Arena Lake Ratzersdorf on May 8-12. The Austrian tournament served traditionally as the opening event of the European season, but this year’s calendar was developed in order to take into consideration the qualification process to the Beijing Olympics and therefore its kick-off was predated in April with the upcoming Spanish Masters on Grand Canary (April 17-20).
The women’s tournament is going to feature a series of very renowned names within the European beach volleyball community, such as defending European Champions Arvanity/Karadassiou from Greece, all top-ranked German duos such as Goller/Ludwig, Pohl/Rau and Holtwick/Semmler, along with Norwegians Hakedal/Toerlen, who are also already qualified for next August’s Olympic Games in China. The German duos – as well as many other European top teams – started their season quite convincingly a couple of weeks ago in Adelaide (Australia) within the frame of the opening leg of the 2008 SWATCH FIVB World Tour, with Goller and Ludwig eventually taking a respectable fifth place in the middle of an impressive Brazilian domination.
As for the men, even if the first European stop of the 2008 SWATCH FIVB World Tour is going to be staged almost contemporarily in Prague, the Austrian audience will be delighted by local favorites Doppler/Gartmayer, 2007 European champions, as well as by a few more German highly competitive duos, such as Brink/Dieckmann, Reckermann/Urbatzka and Klemperer/Koreng.
Both the men’s and women’s main draw consists of 16 teams; a qualification tournament entered by 32 teams for men and women respectively will be played in advance as well as the quota play-off matches for those countries that have been enrolling more teams than are allowed to participate in the main draw.
As for the competition schedule, this sounds as follows:
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Country Quota Play-Off
Friday, May 9, 2008
Qualification Tournament Men and Women
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Main Draw Women and Qualification Tournament Men
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Semi Finals/Finals Women and Main Draw Men
Monday, May 12, 2008
Semi Finals/Finals Men
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